The Heart of the Hills eBook

When he reached the white, dusty road, the fires of
his ambition kept on kindling with every step, and
his pace, even in the cool of the early morning, sent
his hat to his hand, and plastered his long lank hair
to his temples and the back of his sturdy sunburnt
neck. The sun was hardly star-pointing the horizon
when he saw the luminous smoke-cloud over the town.
He quickened his step, and in his dark eyes those
fires leaped into steady flames. The town was
wakening from sleep. The driver of a milk-cart
pointed a general direction for him across the roof-tops,
but when he got into the wilderness of houses he lost
that point of the compass and knew not which way to
turn. On a street corner he saw a man in a cap
and a long coat with brass buttons on it, a black stick
in his hand, and something bulging at his hip, and
light dawned for Jason.

“Air you the constable?” he asked, and
the policeman grinned kindly.

“I’m one of ’em,” he said.

“Well, how do I git to the college I’m
goin’ to?”

The officer grinned good-naturedly again, and pointed
with his stick.

“Follow that street, and hurry up or you’ll
get a whippin’.”

“Thar now,” thought Jason, and started
into a trot up the hill, and the officer, seeing the
boy’s suddenly anxious face, called to him to
take it easy, but Jason, finding the pavements rather
uneven, took to the middle of the street, and without
looking back sped on. It was a long run, but
Jason never stopped until he saw a man standing at
the door of a long, low, brick building with the word
“Tobacco” painted in huge letters above
its closed doors, and he ran across the street to
him.

“Whar’s the college?”

The man pointed across the street to an entrance between
two gray stone pillars with pyramidal tops, and Jason
trotted back, and trotted on through them, and up
the smooth curve of the road. Not a soul was
in sight, and on the empty steps of the first building
he came to Jason dropped, panting.

XVIII

The campus was thick with grass and full of trees,
there were buildings of red brick everywhere, and
all were deserted. He began to feel that the
constable had made game of him, and he was indignant.
Nobody in the mountains would treat a stranger that
way; but he had reached his goal, and, no matter when
“school took up,” he was there.

Still, he couldn’t help rising restlessly once,
and then with a deep breath he patiently sat down
again and waited, looking eagerly around meanwhile.
The trees about him were low and young—­
they looked like maples—­and multitudinous
little gray birds were flitting and chattering around
him, and these he did not know, for the English sparrow
has not yet captured the mountains. Above the
closed doors of the long brick building opposite the
stone-guarded gateway he could see the word “Tobacco”
printed in huge letters, and farther away he could